Planning is an investment…

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

If you want to be successful in the game of chess you always have to plan ahead and think through your next several moves. You don’t know how your opponent will react to your plan, nor do you know what moves they planning to make, but to have a chance at winning you can’t simply be reactionary, you must make the effort to plan ahead.

How much of our time do we spend planning versus reacting? I have found that time invested in planning enables one to both act, and react, with purpose, design and intent. Effort expended without having first spent time intentionally planning ahead is always reactionary and tactical.

Will plans fail? Of course they will. There is no way to anticipate every outcome, see every possibility, know every possible challenge that will rise along the way. However, I believe that the investment of time in planning allows one to simultaneously exist on two planes. First is the the proactive, what do we want/expect/intend to happen? Second, what will we do and how will we react to the world around us?

Time is the currency of life. How do you want to spend it? Will you spend it with intentional purpose to create a desired output, i.e., planning? Or will you spend it in a tactical way, never in charge of or responsible for how it is used, i.e., reacting?